1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a concrete composition, and more particularly to a concrete composition for roller compacted placing method.
2. Related Art Statement
A roller compacted placing method has been developed in Japan in recent years for placing concrete for the construction of a concrete dam. This method is entirely different from the conventional concrete placing methods in which a cable crane or the like equipment is used, and has been developed to rationalize the operations for constructing a concrete dam while reconsidering systematically all operations including mixing, transporation, placing and compaction of the concrete. More specifically, in the roller compacted placing method, a concrete of dry consistency is transported by damp trucks, spread by bulldozers or wheel loaders, and compacted by rollers or vibrating rollers. This method attracted public attention as a novel economical method, as it had been increasingly used for the construction of main bodies, water cushion rooms and aprons of dams.
The roller compacted placing method is characterized in that the thickness of a concrete layer placed by a single step is increased by as much as 1.5 meters at the most, with an increase in volume of the concrete placed. The volume of concrete placed within an hour by means of the roller compacted placing method reaches 50 to 200 m.sup.3, which is larger than that placed by the conventional method, which amounts to about 30 m.sup.3 at the most, whereby the construction speed is remarkably increased. Moreover, according to the roller compacted placing method, a concrete containing a smaller quantity of cement per unit volume thereof exhibits a strength comparable to that of a concrete placed by the conventional method and containing a larger quantity of cement per unit volume. Since the content of cement in the concrete placed by the roller compacted placing method is small, the exothermic heat generated therefrom is decreased correspondingly so that the resistance to thermal cracking is improved. Accordingly, the roller compacted placing method is particularly suited for the construction of a massive concrete structure.
A concrete composition containing 120 to 160 kg/m.sup.3 of cement and placed by the roller compacted placing method has a strength of 80 to 150 kgf/cm.sup.3 (after aging for 3 months), which is comparable to the strength obtainable by a concrete composition containing 200 kg/m.sup.3 of cement and placed by the conventional method. Provision of cooling means, such as cooling pipe arrangement, is not necessary when a concrete containing as a low a cement content as 120 kg/m.sup.3 is used. A concrete composition which is impoverished in cement may be used within a dam mat or the interior of a main body which is not an important structural portion, or may be used for forming portions which are not subjected to severe abrasion, impact, repeated freezing and thawing or neutralization from the environment. However, since the dam apron and water cushion room of a dam are subjected to abrasion or impact, at least the surfaces of such portions must be covered by surface layers enriched with cement to provide high strength. The surface layers should have thicknesses so that the concrete composition enriched with cement is not impaired by thermal cracking, or should be cooled by pipe cooling or other proper means to avoid thermal cracking. The task of increasing the strength and the task of decreasing the exothermic heat are the conflicting tasks imposed in placing a concrete compostion to construct a massive structure.
Anyway, in the construction of a dam, more than several hundred thousand cubic meters of concrete are placed. If the content of cement in a unit volume of concrete can be decreased to provide a concrete having a high strength, the exothermic heat generated from the concrete is decreased and the cooling pipe arrangement or other cooling means can be dispensed with. In addition, as the exothermic heat generated from a unit volume of concrete is decreased, the volume or thickness of concrete placeable by a single step is increased with significant economical effect so that the construction speed is increased.
However, the conventional concrete composition used in the roller compacted placing method is prepared simply by adding fly ash and/or a water-reducing agent to a mixture of a cement and an aggregate, and does not provide satisfactory strength without increasing the exothermic heat.